Hey all, recently built a computer (budget build, nothing special) and installed Windows 7 Professional. I originally wanted to run Ubuntu from VMWare Station, but the more and more I use Windows, the more I realize I should have done it the other way around. Now I want to backup my files from Windows and install Ubuntu as the primary OS. I couldn't find a guide that was related to home use, they all were server related. My primary question is, should I just back up my select files to a external HDD and install Linux and wipe out the Windows partition completely? Or is there another way around this? Complete Linux newb here, thanks for your time.

Preferably backup to a FAT32 formatted volume as that's more widely supported in the Linux world than NTFS. The only thing I'd do after backing up to an external HDD is to fire up a Live Linux CD and chack that you can access that drive and it's files from within Linux. If that works then you should be all set.

not really
although the 1990's fat forat can be used the current NTFS-3g has had NO problems in read/write for the last 3 + years
ntfs drives will auto mount on most Linux distros

i would use ntfs
fat dose NOT support files bigger than 4 gig and partitions bigger that 32 gig

I know I've used a recent distro (CentOS 5.5 maybe, I can't remember) where it wasn't supported without fuse. But either way, he should really test the drive, using a live CD version of whatever distro he's going to use, to make sure the data is accessible as that's one headache that's easily avoidable.

Hi ExplicitX,

Let me offer a bit of a different suggestion. First and foremost backup your data files to some external medium!!!!! CDs DVDs flash drives, external hard drive etc. You should be doing this routinely anyhow right?

Then download and install VMWare Converter on the Windows installation. Clean up as many junk files as you can from the Windows installation (disk cleanup etc.) Then use the converter to convert the Windows installation to a VMWare guest machine. Write this to your external hard drive.

(If you think you may want to restore the Windows machine in the future back it up with something like Norton Ghost (HawkPE) or similar.)

Now that you have your data backed up and a copy of your Windows machine go ahead and install Linux on the PC. Then install VMWare Player. Copy the files made by VMWare Converter to the Linux drive. You can then do File; Open a Virtual Machine from VMWare Player and point to the Windows VM files.

If you wish to discuss some ideas about how to partition your hard drive for the Linux install just post back.

Ken

p.s. as far as accessing files from Windows type drives (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) this has not been an issue in Linux for quite a while. Don't be too concerned.

Could use a P2V program to create a virtual windows.

What about the inverse? Can Windows access ext4 partitions? I don't think it can natively do it, but is it possible to do it using some kind of utility?

There are drivers for ext2/3, but I haven't seen any for ext4 yet.

I don't think that FAT32 in this case is a bad choice.
But there are several ways you can go. What I would do is using gparted and decrease the Windowspartition. On the free space I would create a new partition which can be done from within Windows. This partition can be FAT32 or NTFS. Then I would copy my personal data onto this partition.
Afterwards I would delete the Windows-partition, repartition it as an extended partition with the logical Linux and swap partitions which I need. And then install Linux on it.
I think the suggestion of taylorkh (post #5) is valuable, if you have Windows running in a VM, you can access your partition with the personal data as a shared folder (well, you'll have to mount it anywhere in you Linux-system).

Markus